Beelzebub (Starcross)
Beelzebub is the leader of one of Hell's longest lasting and most successful shells, Dis, which she rules with a ruthless, heartless rigidity. Though she was once Lucifer's closest ally, the years that she spent suffering and rebuilding after her failed rebellion, only to see the world around her waste away, left her deeply disillusioned and miserable. Ultimately, Beelzebub gave in to the worst aspects of her personality and returned, in secret, to Heaven's side, as a demonic ally who seeks to prevent Hell from ever uniting again. Backstory Created in Heaven as one of many mass-produced angels, the angel originally known as Hespera was, at first, fairly unremarkable. With all the time she had to spend on bureaucratic work, Hespera slowly developed a personality of her own, the type of personality that many angels find themselves growing into. She became a sardonic sycophant, an eager follower to her superiors who integrated nicely into Heavenly civilization. For the most part, at first. This aspect of her personality eventually got her into trouble, as she found herself wrapped up in corruption, which left her nurturing a selfish streak. Unsurprisingly, Hespera ended up Falling for her sins, cast outside of Heaven and only barely surviving the experience. Stranded and left a shell of her former self by the experience, Hespera nursed her wounds and slowly recovered from the spiritual and mental anguish. It took her time, but eventually she found herself growing resentful of Heaven, a negative emotion that intensified within her to become an intense hatred. In this state, a small, roving group of similarly bitter fallen angels happened upon her, and Hespera’s submissive personality was easily caught up in this, too. Their leader, some plain and soured fallen angel, took some interest in her, and though Hespera returned this interest, she found that perhaps this was not for the best. Hespera’s relationship with her superior was romantic, and in many ways mirrored the exploitative ways that she had been manipulated by her superiors in Heaven, leading to her Fall. She was treated poorly, and this only grew worse over time, eventually leading to the loss of her left eye, which her superior gouged out. The wound could not heal, and, egged on by what grew to become years of misery, Hespera snapped one night and killed her superior as she rested. Immediately afterwards, she abandoned the other fallen angels and set off on her own. Disgusted by her repeated failure to stand up for herself and her own compliant, sycophantic personality, Hespera renamed herself Beelzebub and swore that she would not be ensnared like that again. Though she worked to become a healthier person, Beelzebub still struggled with her mental health and often interacted with demons, the nature of which skewed her closer and closer to them in nature. Before she fully crossed over and became a demon, however, she became aware that an old acquaintance of hers, Lucifer, had Fallen as well. For some reason, Beelzebub found herself seeking her out, and, when she did find her, she helped her recover from the trauma of her Fall. And then, together, they became demons, and close friends. They helped each other overcome their flaws and become better, healthier people. In Hell, Beelzebub explored herself, becoming more and more stable and eventually discovering the true nature of her inner world. This versatile inner world would allow her to fill the world with her own spawn, partial clones born from her own inner world, and Beelzebub, excited for meaning, and yearning the chance to do some good, to give life to the world, used it. She produced many children from her own soul, and loved each and every one dearly. Even in Hell, away from Heaven, Lucifer could not get rid of her altruistic, rebellious streak. She knew that one day, Heaven would come to conquer and destroy Hell, and that the day was growing even closer, and as it did, she decided to muster all her willpower and all her resources in the hopes of fending them off. With Beelzebub, she united Hell against the nearing threat, and struck back on her own. This was her purpose. Beelzebub shared her fears and her idealistic ambitions, and she granted her support, even if she also held fears as to what would happen if they failed. But Beelzebub believed in Lucifer. Unfortunately, they did fail, as close as they may have come to victory. Lucifer was defeated by Abaddon herself, and Hell was left in shambles. Beelzebub herself suffered many losses, as her children died in the pursuit of this freedom and safety. With Lucifer gone, sealed away, Beelzebub was left alone, disillusioned, and hopeless. She, and what allies remained, had to rebuild Hell themselves. Beelzebub was left with a Shell under her own rule, Dis, and her living children helped establish security. Beelzebub, as miserable as she may have been, spent many years managing Dis as best as she could, but her mentality suffered. The beliefs that she had struggled with in the past, the nihilistic fear that the world may be a miserable and hopeless place that could never change, began to creep back into her. She saw Hell struggle to stay stable, and many demons and Shells rise and fall. To Beelzebub, Lucifer’s dream slowly became an impossibility, foolish optimism that led only to tragedy. In desperation, Beelzebub slowly slipped back into her unhealthy habits, but they only got worse. After all, she had been trapped again. The submissive nature of her personality had only brought her more misery, with how she had gotten caught up in Lucifer’s charisma. Disgusted, and desperate to prevent this from ever happening again, Beelzebub became obsessed with the chance to prove her dominance, her independence. This, combined with all the anger and misery brewing up within her, ended up coming out explosively. Beelzebub awoke from a red haze to find that a companion of hers was dead. In a burst of rage, Beelzebub had butchered her. And, as horrified as she was, for her… it had felt amazing. The feeling of power, of control… it was all-consuming. And Beelzebub gave into it. With her own moral failure, her rule of Dis changed, too, becoming increasingly tyrannical. The Shell became a harsh and unforgiving place, ruled by Beelzebub and her children, the numbers of which only grew greater and greater. This, too only reinforced Beelzebub’s beliefs, and she looked to Heaven, which still stood strong. Seeking to ensure some sort of delusional safety in oblivion for herself, her family, and her Shell, Beelzebub betrayed everything she had once fought for and sided with the angels. As a Heavenly agent, she would stay in Hell and report back to Uriel, keeping the demons from ever rallying and uniting again by any means necessary. Appearance Beelzebub's unkempt appearance betrays much of her personality, and she is never not smelling intensely of death, a sickly scent that follows her like a cloud. She stands in a constant, seemingly permanent slouch, her back apparently curved to such a degree that standing straight gets her body cracking and snapping in all sorts of places. However, it is when she stands tall that she reveals her true height, which is surprisingly tall and concealed by her miserably poor posture. She's made to look even smaller by her gaunt, lanky build, so thin that you can see her ribs, and her arms and fingers are just inches away from being uncannily long. All these things make it clear just how unhealthy she is, but if it wasn't enough, her greasy skin is so pale it seems almost translucent. Finally, however, Beelzebub's insectoid nature gives itself away with her chitinous arms, of which she has four, and legs, which gleam a bluish black. This exoskeleton is covered in bristly hairs in spots, bristly hairs that can suddenly become sharp and stiff enough to slice through flesh. Short, greasy black hair is swept to one side, covering Beelzebub's left eye, while her right, a sinister, gleaming red, is always visible. The left is actually a compound eye of the same coloration, crammed into her eye socket, with the surrounding flesh badly scarred, with ragged, missing chunks of her eyelid. As a result, Beelzebub cannot completely close her left eye. Both eyes are sunken, with heavy bags underneath. Poking out of her hair are a pair of long, plumose antennae, like those of a mosquito. Her mouth, however, is perhaps the most inhuman part of her appearance. While she has familiar rows of razor sharp teeth that she flashes in cruel smiles, behind, she has a monstrously deformed tongue that resembles the mouthparts of a fly. Normally, this tongue acts like a spongy pad that can spit up digestive enzymes and consume food, but she can transform it in a number of ways, to more resemble the mouthparts of other flies, changing the rest of her mouth in the process. It can become a complex, biologically accurate proboscis and grow sharp mandibles; really, all those scary teeth are just for show. Each of Beelzebub's limbs end in tarsal claws, with four fingers and three toes, while a large insectoid abdomen diverges from her torso and hands behind the legs. Lastly, she has a single pair of translucent insectoid wings, with the faint image of a skull and crossbones on both. Underneath her jacket, she has the halteres of a proper fly as well. As repellent as her body may be, Beelzebub dresses nicely and professionally, wearing a finely tailored and fitted suit that. The jacket is a stark black, going with the color of her exoskeleton, and she keeps her lower pair of arms hidden underneath it. A crisp white dress shirt is always underneath, and it is adorned with a simple, very dark blue necktie. Sometimes the color of the tie or shirt may vary, but the jacket itself is always black. For legwear, Beelzebub wears a simple pair of dress pants, and she concerns herself with no other clothing, always standing barefoot. This is just the exterior, however, and Beelzebub's true form is constantly right under the surface, waiting to erupt from her skin at a moment's notice. She can meld her body and shape as she pleases, taking on traits from any species of fly, any fusion of those species, and even new traits entirely. The process of transformation is quick, but gruesome, as her skin is torn open and vestigial organs flop from her flesh. She may take the form of a simple, ordinary fly, or even a swarm of them, but, more often, Beelzebub transforms parts of her body at a time. For example, her head may violently shift into the head of a fly, or she may grow new fly-like limbs. When fully transformed, Beelzebub takes the appearance of a massive, hunched over fly with the long, thin legs of a mosquito, and covered in the bristly spines of a robber fly. Of course, even this form is subject to further change. Personality The first thing any person would notice about Beelzebub is that she is not really that pleasant of a person. In fact, you could go so far as to call her gross, and it would not be inaccurate in the slightest. Her personality has degraded and rotted along with the rest of her, and the once sweet, if sardonic Beelzebub is now a lying, backstabbing sycophant without even a scrap of moral fiber. Despite this, she has a sickly charm about her, one that makes it easy for her to manipulate others, cruelly flexing control over them for her own corrupt and sadistic ends. As awful as she may be on so many levels, Beelzebub does reserve genuine love and loyalty for her children, who she cares for more than anything in the world and who motivate her in nearly everything she does. Beelzebub presents herself slickly and smoothly, with a casual, disarming playfulness that disguises just how dangerous she is. This façade is by no means absolute, however, and she is often casually, thoughtlessly cruel and condescending, but even this is carefully controlled to just be more charming. (It helps that Dis' society is predisposed to finding these things attractive). She's effortlessly confident and smug, always self-assured, and she easily draws others to her side and wraps them around her fingers for later use. Her every action and movement drips with self-satisfaction, and it's obvious to anyone who spends even a moment around her just how self-absorbed she is. Underneath all the false niceties, Beelzebub is a depraved hedonist and utterly selfish, having long given in to all her basest impulses in the name of pleasure. In her eyes, virtually everyone else is just a tool or a stepping stone, to be appropriately used in the pursuit of her goals. Beelzebub simply sees people as expendable, as renewable resources, and does not spare them any empathy. The most disturbing way this aspect of her personality shows itself is in her shameless obligate sadism. To put it bluntly, Beelzebub thrives on the pain and misery of others, and relishes in causing it herself. Many of her actions are carefully orchestrated with the explicit and sole purpose of maximizing the misery of others, and she enjoys "playing" with them, often going out of her way to pick them apart and make them uncomfortable. Beelzebub tends to speak in innuendo, if not outright vulgarity, and she revels in the feeling of power and control she gets from tormenting others. It's exhilarating for here, and the final touch is always to take their lives and cast them into her inner world, where only pain awaits. She loves all the authority that she has amassed and flexes it happily, finding a perverse joy in the ways she has changed and ruined Dis. Hedonism is the name of the game in her free time, and Beelzebub indulges constantly and shamelessly, often with her literal harem, who are generally spared the worst of her sadistic urges. But, in flashes of rage, Beelzebub's true nature can show itself, leaving victims a bloody slurry that Beelzebub barely remembers reducing them to, making every second spent in her presence a gamble. She has no morals, rejecting them all as society's way to control people, but, deep inside... Beelzebub knows just how awful she's become, and sees herself as fundamentally, irreparably evil. All of this, however, is just the cover for the way Beelzebub thinks and acts. She may seem impulsive and lazy, but Beelzebub is anything but. There is and never has been a point in her life where she has stopped thinking for even a second. Beelzebub is patient, deliberate, and thoughtful, acting carefully and analytically, watching the world and waiting for opportunities to act and remind everyone just why she's lasted so long. While the rest of Hell has fallen inwards and squabbled among each other, Beelzebub watched Heaven stand tall throughout the years, which has convinced her that such a government ideal. As a result, Dis mirrors Heaven in many regards, as an oppressive place where her very word is law. What Beelzebub values most in society is stability and security, and she genuinely believes herself to be working in the best interests of all of Hell. Once, she was an outspoken critic of Heaven, but now she fears and bows to its authority, seeing all the demonic rebels of the past, especially Lucifer, as foolishly naive and reckless optimists. Indeed, this is one of Beelzebub's greatest flaws. As domineering as she may be, Beelzebub cannot bring herself to resist the greater authority of someone like Mastema or Uriel, surrendering to their wills without much of a fight, if any. She has really given up against the system and returned to help uphold it, no matter how miserable it may be. She believes that the world is invariably going to skew towards such misery, partially because everyone in the world is so rotten and malicious. Beelzebub believes any change for the better is impossible, and accepts her negative traits in herself, seeing them as simply a part of life, and even leans into the view of her as an awful monster, finding that it is the only reputation that suits her. Because of her nihilistic views on life, Beelzebub trusts virtually no one, though she sees her children as very reliable and dependable. And on the subject of Beelzebub's children... there is one thing that comes before everything else for her, and that is family. All she wants for her children is to make a world in which they can be safe, and hopefully happy, but her experiences have convinced her that a world like that is simply not possible. The despair this conflict caused her for so long is, in truth, what eventually drove her to Heaven's side. She was not really motivated by a desire for stability, or structure, or safety. What happened is that Beelzebub accepted Mastema's solution as the only escape from pain. While she doesn't want her children to die, and hates herself for selling out, she believes that it's better that they die peacefully than live and suffer, only to die suffering anyways. All of these things contribute to the truth at Beelzebub’s core; an intense, boiling mess of self-loathing and suicidal fantasies. She feels nothing but guilt for betraying Lucifer, her children, and all of Hell by becoming a monster and turning to Heaven. But she cannot turn back. Not anymore. Powers and Statistics Tier: 3-C, higher with Feeding Fear Powers and Abilities: |-|Personal Abilities= Genius Intelligence, Master Martial Artist, Insect Manipulation (Beelzebub can produce and control swarms of demonic flies formed inside her soul), Conceptual Manipulation (Type 4; Beelzebub's attacks damage opponents on not just a physical level, but a conceptual one as well), Death Manipulation, Disease Manipulation, Dream Manipulation, Fear Manipulation, Illusion Manipulation (Can create perfect illusions and even use the most powerful form of illusion, Paracosm Phantasmagoria, which inverts the inner world of a victim to trap them within), Information Analysis and Manipulation, Law Manipulation (She could potentially break a Heavenly law), Mind Manipulation, Pocket Reality Manipulation (She can materialize and control her inner world as a pocket dimension), Quantum Manipulation, Sense Manipulation, Soul Manipulation (All her attacks, physical or magical, affect the soul just as they do the body, and her demonic maggots eat away at the souls of their victims, eventually hollowing them out), Spatial Manipulation, Time Manipulation (She can manipulate time in a number of ways, and her Goetic Eye dilates time so that she perceives reality at a fourth the speed), Absorption (She can absorb energy and magic, and she can energize and heal herself by absorbing the fear and negative emotions of others), Dimensional Travel, Incorporeal/Intangibility (Immaterial; Beelzebub is made out of magic and immune to conventional physical harm), Invisibility and Nonexistence (Type 1; Beelzebub can completely erase herself from existence, becoming a nothing that cannot be detected), Portal Creation, Power Mimicry (She can copy techniques from the people trapped in her inner world), Power Nullification (Her inner world cuts off all attempts at escape, rendering teleportation and other transdimensional attempts at movement useless, and Paracosm Phantasmagoria can strip victims of their magical abilities), Precognition (Thanks to her Goetic Eye, she can easily predict an opponent's movements and react accordingly, and Beelzebub can react to billions of attacks delivered through Logos before any of them happen due to her experience with it), Sealing (Beelzebub can seal others inside her inner world, or use Paracosm Phantasmagoria to seal them within their own souls by inverting their inner worlds), Shapeshifting, Statistics Amplification (By using Feeding Fear to draw energy from Salem Corpseworld, Beelzebub can significantly boost her own power), Summoning, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Teleportation, Immortality (Types 1 and 3), Regeneration (Low-Godly; can regenerate from nothing but the "data" of her soul) |-|General Abilities= Magic, Extrasensory Perception (Agents maintain a constant, perfect, and precise image of their surroundings by analyzing them through magic), Self-Sustenance (Types 1 and 2; Beelzebub does not need to breathe, drink, or eat, and has no physical need for rest, though it is often psychologically necessary), Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Flight, Forcefield Creation, Non-Physical Interaction (An agent can interact with immaterial or incorporeal entities, such as ghosts, as well as things that don't exist), Reactive Evolution (An Absolute Barrier automatically adapts to attacks to become more resistant), Reality Warping with Override Sigils (Override Sigils can be used to overwrite the laws of physics), Acausality (Type 2; An agent's history, present, and fate all exist independently of the past and future), Resistance to conceptual, mental, physical, and spiritual attack (Absolute Barriers protect the user from attacks on all levels of existence, potentially providing protection from a host of abilities) Attack Potency: Galaxy level (Superior to the likes of Milky Way and SOLSTICE, and comparable to Azrael, Baphomet, Logos, and Metatron, who can fight a defensive battle against Gabriel or even a casual Uriel, though they have no real chance of victory on their own), higher with Feeding Fear (Boosts Beelzebub's power significantly, putting her above formerly equal foes by a substantial but not insurmountable margin, growing closer to Gabriel's level of power without reaching it). Speed: Massively FTL+ (She's one of the fastest fliers in Heaven or Hell even before her Goetic Eye speeds her up, and she can keep up with the likes of Baphomet and Harahel, fighting while moving at high speeds and traveling through galaxy-sized shells), higher with Feeding Fear. Lifting Strength: Multi-Stellar (Superior to the likes of Remnant, who can fit multiple stars in their orbit). Striking Strength: Galactic Class (While weaker than Baphomet, she is still a peer, and can easily slice through her flesh with her tarsal claws), higher with Feeding Fear. Durability: Galaxy level (She can take hits from Baphomet and Harahel, along with others on their level), higher with Feeding Fear. Stamina: Effectively limitless. Originally an angel, Beelzebub has worked hard to regain the exceptional stores of energy that angels possess, and has succeeded in this regard, so she has little want for any more. She can easily keep up extended fights with dangerous opponents, even when overusing Dream Evil and damaging her soul worse and worse, and even if left on death's door, she can keep moving through sheer force of will. In such dire straits, she could potentially even escape or win thanks to Feeding Fear, which allows her to turn the tides of a battle in an instant. Range: Low Multiversal (She can affect things in other universes and in other shells, while in Dis). Standard Equipment: Nothing notable. Intelligence: Supergenius. Beelzebub's playful, casual exterior belies her extreme competence and analytical nature, both of which make her an extremely dangerous opponent. She's spent millions of years manipulating Hell's other leaders and pitting them against one another, all while keeping stability within her own shell of Dis and keeping her true allegiances secret. In the past, she was no less cunning, proving to be one of Hell's greatest strategists in the war in Heaven, with her deliberate, thoughtful actions doing much to advance Hell's ambitions. As a fighter, she's both a master of Logos and magic, using the latter to support her violent, overwhelming combat style. While she relies on surprise attacks, to minimize risk to her own person, she's a fearsome opponent even in less favorable situations, partly because of her willingness to do anything it takes to secure victory. Nothing is too underhanded for Beelzebub, whose skills show themselves best in personal situations and politics. Charismatic and manipulative, she can easily exploit another's psychological issues, picking them apart with practiced ease. All of her skills are aided greatly by her Goetic Eye and inner world, which supports her already substantial processing skills with a makeshift supercomputer network, scrounged together from what remains of her victims. Weaknesses: Beelzebub dislikes summoning her eldest and most competent children in serious fights, as she does not wish to risk their lives, and she can only maintain powering up so many at a time. While using Dream Evil, she cannot directly affect others in major ways, and it harms her soul, making it difficult to use for extended periods of time, over and over again, or when she's already badly injured. Her inner world eats away at her soul and will eventually kill her if she doesn't sate it with something else. The nature of her inner world also makes Beelzebub more vulnerable to causality interference. ---- Standard Tactics: Beelzebub never hesitates to fight dirty and she is careful to do so in a way that minimizes risk to herself. She almost never fights alone, summoning droves of her own children, both immature and mature, and using them to obscure her own position, and, if necessary, take hits for her. While her children attack and distract her opponent, Beelzebub flits in and out of existence using Dream Evil, suddenly reappearing the moment any opening presents itself to exploit, right before she disappears again. Thanks to this low-risk fighting style, combined with the safety provided by her children and Goetic Eye, Beelzebub can avoid retaliation while relentlessly attacking, also using Nightmare Reader to disorient and intimidate a victim. If she is badly injured, Beelzebub will not hesitate to flee and take a moment to recuperate using Feeding Fear. If pushed further, or to secure a kill against a slippery opponent, Beelzebub will use her inner world. When the time comes to finish the fight, Beelzebub has her eldest, most powerful daughters hold down an opponent, so she can casually deliver the coup de grâce and throw her victim into her inner world. Abilities Agency: A mage is more properly known as an agent, as in “one that acts or exerts power”. Separated from the rest of the universe, an agent is essentially a miniature universe all their own, with complete control over their destiny, free to pursue whatever future they wish. They do this through magic, the art of using one’s understanding to control Fantasy, the stuff of sheer willpower and imagination. * Absolute Barrier: A magical barrier that protects the user from external manipulation and attack, on every level of existence. An Absolute Barrier protects the user’s body, mind, and soul - their cells and atoms, the magical and physical forces keeping them together, and everything else. It is akin to a magical immune system, protecting the agent from threats and adapting to future attack. It passively protects the user from most types of attack, manipulation, and control, as long as the barrier is strong enough - an agent of substantially greater power can punch straight through one. An Absolute Barrier is passively maintained at all times, even in sleep, requiring no energy to maintain, and can only be removed by a stronger agent actively stripping it away, or by the user consciously lowering them. An Absolute Barrier is the evolved form of the soul’s original protective layer, refined through the usage of and exposure to magic. * Radar: An agent’s magical abilities passively sustain a constant 360° image of their surroundings, which is projected straight to their mind for processing. This radar is far more reliable than conventional senses, and cannot be easily fooled by tricks that would trip up any normal human. In the hands of a powerful enough agent, it can even track superluminal movements. It constantly operates at the agent’s maximum processing speed, even when such things would normally be restricted to allow for normal, everyday life. ---- Nightmare Reader: A magic that can be used to manifest the fears of a target as reality, a magic used by Beelzebub to torment her victims and drive them to their breaking points. For Beelzebub, an obligate sadist and monstrous serial killer, this is a magic that manifests itself through her very existence, with every nightmare and every fear acting as an extension of her own soul. These extremely accurate replications are created using any information Beelzebub can get her hands on, even if it’s by prying it out of an opponent’s soul. While anyone would feel some measure of fear when confronted with their worst nightmares, the nature of Beelzebub’s magic, combined with her skill in manipulation, supernaturally magnifies this fear. Within these constructs, negative futures and undesired outcomes are visible, seeming more and more real the more someone looks at them. The deeper they fall into fear, the more monstrous and powerful these nightmares become, ultimately growing so powerful that they can kill from shock alone. In Beelzebub’s case, her magic can compel a victim to simply will themself to death in an attempt to escape their fears, resulting in the collapse of their inner world. Beelzebub can even shroud herself in her opponent’s fears, allowing them to seep into her soul so that she can best embody them and become a living nightmare. At its most powerful, Beelzebub can literally transform into her opponent's fears, becoming a being of pure horror. With this level of skill, even abstract fears can be manifested as conceptual curses that aim to realize them, dooming those that fear death to have it creep up on them. * Feeding Fear: Beelzebub can draw upon the fear felt by her opponents and all others around her, friend or foe, to increase her own power, replenish her stamina, and heal severe wounds, feeding upon these negative emotions and using them to sustain her own existence. This is always a useful tool, but it becomes increasingly dangerous as Beelzebub’s victim slips deeper and deeper into complete horror, causing their anxieties to intensify the more Beelzebub feeds. The magic leaves opponents weaker and weaker, and can even potentially kill them, allowing Beelzebub to completely consume their soul. Thanks to Salem Corpseworld, Beelzebub is never lacking in terms of victims that she can use to fuel Feeding Fear. Her soul contains the countless people who have fallen before her, forever suspended in agony and horror as they are fed upon by her inner world, and she can draw upon this misery with Feeding Fear to gain a substantial boost to her power, making the technique something of a trump card for her. ** Hysteria Star: Using Feeding Fear to amass magical energy from victims on a massive scale, Beelzebub manifests an immense sphere made up of compounded, compressed negativity. Like a sun, it hangs over the battlefield, awakening uncontrollable panic and fear in all those touched by its light, capable of throwing entire planets into complete madness and chaos. If that wasn’t enough, Beelzebub can launch this negative mass at an opponent as if it were a bomb, leaving anything in its path to be eaten up by anxiety and dissolve into nothingness, crushed by the weight of so much fear. Alternatively, she can use Feeding Fear to consume her own Hysteria Star, greatly boosting her own capabilities and bringing herself back from the brink of death in a pinch. * Hunting Horror: Beelzebub forces the laws of nature back onto her opponent, trapping them under such restrictions such as the need to breathe, and sets a nightmare upon them. Should they give in and breathe for even a second, or look upon Beelzebub and her illusions, these horrors will snap onto them with unparalleled, animalistic brutality. * Dream Evil: One of Beelzebub’s signature abilities, an extremely effective form of invisibility that she achieves by using Nightmare Reader to alter her physiology and abuse the absurd, fearful logic of a dream. Though primarily used for assassination and reconnaissance, the effectiveness of the technique means that it can be used in combat situations, allowing Beelzebub to slip in and out of invisibility to attack opponents and escape. Describing it as just mere invisibility, however, is an understatement; for this reason, Beelzebub often describes it as “super invisibility”. Instead of just making Beelzebub disappear from sight or eliminating any signs of her presence, Dream Evil erases her existence itself; using dreaming logic, Beelzebub simply dreams herself away. Now, she has no presence, because she is nothing. There’s no soul, no body, and yet, Beelzebub persists. It is similar, in some regards, to Logos’ Zero Heart, but tailored towards stealth rather than an ultimately transient survivability. While logic dictates that hurting such a being would be impossible, magic exists to do the impossible, making the ability useless for taking attacks. Beelzebub is extremely difficult to detect in this state, even through magical means, as she’s not even there. There’s nothing to detect, nothing to feel. She drifts through the world as a nothing, and the world around her acts like she’s not there at all. Of course, as she does not technically exist, Beelzebub has a limited ability to affect the world around her, so she needs to manifest again to directly attack someone. However, given that she can move into range and manifest with a fatal attack in transit, this is not a major weakness. The most severe issue is that it can hurt Beelzebub quite a bit, making it risky to use it for extended periods of time, over and over again, or when Beelzebub is already in bad condition. ** Uncertainty: Beelzebub can focus Dream Evil’s effects on a single enemy, the subject of her malice, to use it to its fullest extent. As long as Dream Evil is active and her opponent doesn’t know her location, Beelzebub can appear essentially anywhere, allowing her to launch impossible surprise attacks, even from the inside of an opponent’s soul. If an opponent would somehow see through Dream Evil and find her location, this ability would be rendered unusable. * Heartbreak Trigger: One of Beelzebub’s most powerful abilities, a spell that, in most situations, will net a certain kill in the most horrific of ways, but one that can only be used under certain conditions. Beelzebub must reach deep into her opponent’s soul to use this magic, and forcibly dredge up the deep, buried memories within them, to remind them how low they once were. Each injury and all trauma that remains recorded by their soul is materialized on Beelzebub’s opponent at once. Even something as little as a papercut returns to split the skin, slicing even the soul, and even if the victim may have forgotten or repressed some wounds, the soul remembers unless they have completely wiped it away. While all these physical and spiritual wounds can be crippling, the real kicker is the trauma itself. Any injury associated with trauma brings with it the memories, in pristine detail, every sensation and feeling. For those who have lived hard lives, every traumatic experience seems to happen at once. Most opponents would die instantly just from the shock and harm of their wounds returning, but the resurgence of trauma digs it in deeper, with all but the strongest-willed buckling under the weight, driven into a suicidal despair and horror so intense that their injuries are irrelevant. After all, they simply will themselves to death. * Paracosm Phantasmagoria: The pinnacle of hallucinatory magic, an illusion that inverts the inner world rather than merely fool around with any of its target’s conventional senses. This draws them into their own consciousness and traps them within, a combination of an illusion and seal, allowing Beelzebub to peruse their memories, put them out of their misery, or absorb them. As long as the spell is active, the victim is subject to a perfect illusion that can draw upon all their thoughts, memories, wishes, and fears to replicate the outside world. Beelzebub has complete control of the specifics; her illusions can be complex, realistic, and subtle, acting over the course of what feels like lifetimes, or nightmarish, seemingly impossible fever dreams. She can make victims relive parts of their lives, or potentially the whole thing, show other possible outcomes, create completely false scenarios, control their actions and force them to follow an unpleasant “script”, or concoct various scenes that acknowledge their unreality but subject the victim to perfectly lifelike torture anyways. She can alter their perception of time during this illusion as well, making them experience what is just moments in reality as years upon years of falsehoods. Even if her victim knows it’s an illusion, breaking out without outside help is so difficult that it’s nearly impossible. Magic can be barred by Beelzebub with ease, and she can control any magic that she lets through anyways. Analyzing the spell while under its effects is extremely challenging, and Beelzebub can stomp out such thoughts anyways. If her opponent does escape the illusion, they are likely to unknowingly be caught in another layer, of which there are thousands in Beelzebub’s case. As these illusions are realized within the inner world of a victim, the fundamental, conceptual basis of their existence, their effects are reflected in full force on both their body and soul. While normal illusions can harm the victim through shock or suggestion, Paracosm Phantasmagoria can do so outright and can kill them with ease. All the energy needed for the illusion is derived from the victim themself, and the strain of this alone can be lethal. Goetic Eye: Beelzebub’s compound eye, the eye obscured by her bangs, represents an aspect of her inner world, materialized physically as a replacement for the eye she once lost. It can be compared to, in some regards, Uriel’s exceptional eyesight, but Beelzebub would never make such a comparison herself. Whereas Uriel’s eyes see all secrets and sins, Beelzebub’s eye does not concern itself with such things. It focuses more on the analysis of what already lies in Beelzebub’s sight. Utilizing the vast supply of broken minds and rotting corpses in Beelzebub’s inner world, Goetic Eye forms a makeshift supercomputer network that supports Beelzebub, both in and out of combat. This, rather simply, helps Beelzebub analyze everything that faces her, but its most powerful aspect is Hyperawareness. Thanks to her Goetic Eye, Beelzebub is perfectly aware of her location in space and capable of making incredibly precise and sudden movements while in high-speed flight. She is one of the greatest fliers in not just Hell, but Heaven as well, as a result. This is just the start of the Goetic Eye, though. Materializing Beelzebub’s paranoia and hypervigilance, it constantly, passively dilates time in her favor, so that she sees the world at a crawl. In her left eye, everyone in the world is moving at a fourth the speed, their every move telegraphed by their slow motions, allowing Beelzebub to easily imagine and predict their movements, and then dodge them. And when she does dodge, Beelzebub draws upon her accelerated time to move at a ridiculous pace, much faster than usual, allowing her to effortlessly escape barrages of attacks from comparable foes, and then counterattack with the same speed. However, this speed boost is mostly reactive, and cannot be used to the same extent on the offense. Lord of the Flies: Beelzebub’s signature, namesake magic, the primary expression of her inner world, Salem Corpseworld. This inner world endlessly produces demonic maggots within, and, with a good source of food for her “children”, Beelzebub can release them into the world. Once given the chance to gorge themselves, Beelzebub’s spawn rapidly mature, growing from maggots to flies, and eventually fully maturing into a complete fly demon, just like their mother. Initially more or less thoughtless, each will develop their own complete consciousness as they grow. Once fully matured, each and every one of Beelzebub’s children are completely their own, each derived from their mother and her inner world. This makes them, in a sense, partial clones of Beelzebub herself, changed to be just different enough. They are completely self-aware, capable of doing whatever they please, even if it conflicts with Beelzebub’s own desires. They have inherited a portion of their mother’s abilities, as well, with a similar, Salem-type inner world, and therefore, each and every demon Beelzebub spawns is an incredibly powerful and skilled being. Each is, once fully grown, comparable to an average member of the Heavenly Host. While much more powerful and useful fully grown, Beelzebub produces swarms of their immature forms, unleashing them on opponents in droves to overwhelm and consume them. While ordinary flies would be harmless to an agent, these are no normal flies, and, amplified by Beelzebub’s presence, they can easily burrow into an opponent’s body and soul, and then devour them. Her full grown children are even more dangerous allies due to their independence, and because of their origins, they too are amplified by Beelzebub’s presence, allowing them to keep up with and harm Beelzebub’s opponents, who should be on another level entirely. Her presence can only maintain this level of power for so many at a time, however, and Beelzebub is unlikely to summon her strongest, oldest, and most skilled children in serious fights. Beelzebub simply cares about them too much to risk getting them killed. Because they are born from Beelzebub’s inner world, each of her children somewhat resembles her in personality - and as she’s changed, her newer children have become worse and worse. Like their mother, they are depraved, hedonistic sadists, but they lack her restraint as well as the quality of their eldest siblings, who were born before Beelzebub’s soul began to rot. As a result, they are born with much less power and skill, and for all of these reasons, Beelzebub finds them to be expendable, something that she is ashamed of. Not that it stops her from exploiting this. * Contagion: Beelzebub herself, as well as each of her children, can synthesize dangerous magical diseases of any variety within their bodies and transmit them to others through a number of means - body contact, exchange of fluids, the air, and their attacks. As these diseases are magical in nature, they affect the soul, not just the body, and can destroy a victim from the inside out with a single bite. The illness can be triggered instantly, or whenever Beelzebub pleases, making it excellent for assassination. And, of course, when administered in the millions by Beelzebub’s swarms, it is often instantly lethal. Logos: Logos is a heavenly martial art, system of magic, and philosophy developed by Yaldabaoth and spread throughout Heaven. Dedicated to controlling the totality of one’s being and using it in its entirety in combat, Logos is an instinctive fallback for angels, who have its foundation programmed into them. Logos works by clearing the user’s mind, sweeping away their emotions and identity for a time so that they can better focus on combat, making it difficult for angels to form stable identities and properly process emotions. As they generally lack any strong identities or emotions by default, angels are incredibly well-suited to the use of Logos. With this supernatural concentration and the powerful will behind it, Logos revolves around transcending physical attacks and instead relying on pure magical attacks. The user simply wills that their target is struck, and they are, by an instantaneous force with no physical component. These cannot be responded to by normal means, instead requiring magical defenses and accurate predictions to counter them. In combat, a user utilizes both physical and pure magic, so an opponent must defend themselves on both a physical and magical level at once. As a former angel, Beelzebub is naturally skilled in Logos and has only refined her technique over the years, becoming one of Hell’s greatest users of the art. However, unlike other demons, Beelzebub uses pure Logos, not Lucifer’s variation, making it just as harmful to her as ever. This makes it ideal for clearing her head and fighting at her best. While she may be playful most of the time, once she gets into a serious fight, Beelzebub drops the pretense, revealing a cold, serious killer. * Eight Ends: A technique that focuses on disabling an opponent’s senses to leave them helpless, channeled through Beelzebub’s attacks. The senses it deactivates are not limited to the five senses of the body, and include a target’s self-awareness, memories, and even their consciousness itself. As agents rely on magical sensing and their own thoughts more than their conventional five senses, a magic limited to these things would be useless, so Eight Ends targets the foundation of things and disables them as well. The deactivation of all an opponent’s senses leads to a comatose state that leaves them incapable of acting or thinking, though agents with powerful defenses can resist these effects, and those with highly developed souls and enough power can act unconsciously in such a state, relying on muscle memory and instinct alone. Few opponents are competent like this. The true power of Eight Ends does not aim to deactivate senses, however, but to destroy them, ultimately seeking to destroy an opponent by completely erasing their consciousness and sense of self. * Natural Reasoning: A deep understanding of Logos’ functions and a sense for its use, developed over the course of many years of experience. Thanks to this knowledge, Beelzebub can accurately predict how opponents will use it and react appropriately, even when it’s exercised on a massive scale and in huge quantities. Salem Corpseworld: An inner world that has rotted away inside its host, becoming just as sour and rotten as the rest of her. Once, Beelzebub’s inner world was completely different, Salem Pandemonium, but as she has fallen into hedonism, sadism, and self-indulgence, at the expense of her health, it has badly devolved. In its past form, it was actually perhaps more powerful, but it remains a deadly weapon. Unlike many inner worlds, Beelzebub does not need to bring it into existence as a pocket dimension to use its abilities, but its full power reveals itself in such a state. Beelzebub’s inner world constantly generates demonic maggots within her own soul, from her own magical energy. These maggots, with nothing else to feed on, will eat away at their mother from the inside out, and thus, to stave off their hunger, Beelzebub must cast victims inside her inner world. Beelzebub’s unfortunate victims will have their lives stretched out into an endless agony, with their souls eventually reduced to vestigial, hollow things that can only feel suffering and fear. At this point, they are good as dead, and cannot be saved. The rate at which Beelzebub’s soul produces maggots cannot be directly controlled, only influenced by the amount of food available, and it will accelerate during combat. Even when her inner world remains abstracted, Beelzebub can absorb others, soul and all, and trap them within. It is extremely difficult to escape once drawn within, as Salem Corpseworld renders techniques such as interdimensional teleportation useless. Those trapped within are ultimately driven insane and completely broken by the experiences, providing fodder for Beelzebub’s maggots, as well as a source of knowledge and power, to be used with Goetic Eye or Nightmare Reader. When materialized, Salem Corpseworld subjects everyone within to the same standards as Beelzebub, causing maggots to generate inside of their soul and eat them from the inside out. They favor other sources of food over Beelzebub, and thus will leave her alone as they attack her foes, in a landscape made from rotting, fly infested corpses that stack up for kilometers. It also improves the many abilities Beelzebub has that are derived from her inner world, such as Goetic Eye and Dream Evil, doubling the former’s time dilation effects and allowing her to use the second more frequently. Override Sigil: An extremely advanced form of magical technique used to change the nature of reality around and within the user, allowing them to bend and break through the laws of physics. Due to their complexity, Override Sigils are incredibly difficult to create, use, and control properly, requiring detailed knowledge and a powerful will. In addition, they tend to, invariably, drain a lot of energy and stamina, making it difficult to use them for extended periods of time, even if this can be mitigated by more powerful and willful agents. * Relative Lightspeed: A common form of Override Sigil that is ultimately developed in some form or another by most agents as they increase in power and speed. Normally, it would be impossible for even an incredibly powerful and willful agent to break through a universal constant such as the speed of light, theoretically requiring infinite magical energy to do so. However, this Override Sigil circumvents this issue by modifying the user's inner world to change the value of c to whatever they please, raising it as they grow in speed so that they can accelerate past the universal speed limit. Gallery Beelzebub Slapson.png|Beelzebub, as drawn by Slapson. Thank you, again! 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